


in the quiet that follows

by orphan_account



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Gen, Misses Clause Challenge, Post-Canon, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 19:09:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5467748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beatrice and her family return home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the quiet that follows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cookinguptales](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookinguptales/gifts).



  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


> Who needs to be at peace in the world? It helps to be between wars, to die a few times each day to understand your father’s sky, as you take it apart piece by piece and can’t feel anything, can’t feel the tree growing under your feet, the eyes poking night only to find another night to compare it to. Whoever heard of turning pain into hummingbirds or red birds—haven’t we grown? What does it mean to be older? Maybe a house without doors can still survive a storm. Maybe I can’t find the proper way to rebel or damn it, I can’t leave. I want to, but you grow inside of me. And as I watch you, before I know it, I’m too heavy, too full of you to move. Maybe that’s what they meant when they said you shouldn’t love a country too much.
> 
> -Nathalie Handal

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The mill in winter was a still and quiet thing, a snowy tableau of how busy it would get in the warmer seasons. By the time Beatrice and her family made it back, the creek had long since frozen from the cold, fixing the water wheel into place. The waters would not turn it again until spring. Even so, there was work to do.

The trip home had been a difficult one. They had been cursed in the early autumn months, a few autumns ago, and so they had to make due without winterwear. Sloughing through the snow was hard-going without having to reaccustom themselves to moving their new-old human bodies. They toddled along like newborn chicks, Beatrice, her littlest siblings, oldest siblings, and parents alike—stumbling and falling into the snow too many times to count. Forwards, backwards, sideways. But they were laughing, her parents and siblings. A real, gasping-for-air kind of people-laughter, the kind that you could never manage with a bluebird’s tiny lungs. Their progress slow but sure. And so they tumbled into the house breathless, numb, and giddy, rushing to start a fire.

“This place is awfully dusty, but it looks like someone must’ve been living here,” said Beatrice’s mother. She was rubbing her hands against her forearms to warm herself up, and clucked her tongue. “Just look at all this firewood! They were a lousy housekeeper, but they sure knew how to prepare for the wintertime.”

“Sounds about right,” Beatrice said through her chattering teeth. If she knew anything about the Woodsman, it was that he had taken his job incredibly seriously. Every time they crossed paths in the forest, he was either chopping down or searching for Edelwood trees. Apparently that monomaniacal professionalism applied to regular trees, too. Go figure. She had not seen him since that night, and hadn’t known what his deal with the Edelwood was before then either, but he must have planned to stay indefinitely. And now he had gone off somewhere—freely, she hoped—and his preparations saved them the daunting task of venturing back into the cold. Another thing to be grateful for.

“Well, that’s a load off. I was worried about sending your father and brothers out to gather firewood in this weather. It’s been a long time, so it’ll take us some getting used to this place again. There’s no telling how much the woods around here have changed.” Her mother looked around the unkempt living room, her mouth set into a bemused moue. “Kind of grim, isn’t it?”

“Kinda,” Beatrice agreed absently, and began picking up some of kindling to toss into the fireplace, then she reached for the pile of neatly chopped logs. 

Or, at least she tried to pick up logs to toss into the fireplace—her fingers fumbled for purchase clumsily against the bark. Perhaps from the cold, perhaps from the transformation. She cupped her hands over her mouth and exhaled. Afterwards, when rubbing them together only made her fingers tingle, she shut her eyes against her exasperation. She never had to worry about frostbite or poor circulation as a bluebird. Those bony fingers were maddeningly useless for just about anything but balancing on a branch or satisfying those sudden, forceful urges to scratch at the dirt, but at least they were reliable in the wintertime.

She opened her eyes when she felt the light touch of her mother’s fingers on her shoulder, the mere suggestion of warmth enough to make Beatrice go still.

“Don’t worry about it, honey. We can just ask your father to do it.”

“I want to do _something_ , Mom.”

“You’ve already done a lot, young lady. There’s no shame in getting some rest and letting your parents take care of you. That’s our job, remember?” They were both silent for a long moment. Her mother's grip tightened, briefly, before she retracted her hand and let go of her shoulder entirely. “Well, here’s an idea. Why don’t you go check what kind of state our house-sitter left the kitchen in?”

“Okay,” said Beatrice, rubbing her palms against her dress. 

Halfway to the kitchen her right hand brushed against a metallic by her midriff. It felt impossibly hot through the numbness that was blanketed just underneath her skin, almost like like a brand. The sensation had caught her by surprise, knocking her off balance so that she had to brace herself against the wall to steady herself. She paused there, in the kitchen’s threshold, to look down at herself.

Hanging from her waist were Adelaide’s scissors. Of course. Just where she’d left them.

After everything that happened during the reunion with her family—the hugs, the tears, the clipping of their wings, more hugs and more tears—Beatrice had undone the sash around her waist, looped it through the smallest of the scissors’ rings, and finally re-tied the sash so that it seemed as though the crane was dangling there, upside-down like a bizarre species of bat. Hardly ideal, she knew. At any point along the way she could have fallen just so, and, well...but it wasn’t like she could just leave them behind. Not after everything she had done to get them. So it had seemed like the most sensible option at the time, especially relative to walking home with them in her new-old hands. Never run with scissors. Or stumble through the snow with ‘em, as it were.

Down the hall there was the clatter of unbalanced footfalls against the floor, the giggling of her brothers and sisters. Their father had deemed the stairs too much of a challenge for the time being, so it would be a while yet before they would reacquaint themselves with their old rooms and belongings, let alone sleeping on a mattress instead of the nest in the tree hollow. Her parents’ backs were to her as they tended to the fireplace. No one was watching her, just then, and a wave of relief washed over her at the realization, followed closely by guilt.

Quietly as she could manage, she made her way into the kitchen, untying her sash as she went. She could tell, when she palmed the crane’s beak of the scissors, that they were a comfortable weight in her hands. Their warmth was thrummed against her skin. Despite the cold of her hands and the air, they stayed the same temperature.

Creepy magical stuff, she figured, and then she stashed them in a drawer filled with wood shavings, of all things.

“Oh, honey,” her mother said, turning to look at her. “I just remembered. Did that friend of yours with the funny hat ever find his brother?”

It took her by surprise. “Yes, we—he did.”

“Oh, what a relief! Those poor boys. Their parents must be worried sick about them. Have they gone home? They aren’t staying in the woods, are they?”

“No, they didn’t stay,” Beatrice replied. “They got to go home, after all.”

“Thank goodness,” said her mother. The fire sputtered to life, slowly but surely. Her mother’s eyes shone in the plane of fire light that illuminates her face. “Oh, Beatrice...I’m just so happy to have you back with us.”

Just happy to be back. Only, just. Were it that simple...well.

\--

Six days after they left their nest in the tree hollow behind and moved back into their old home by the river, Beatrice’s family came to the consensus that there was, in fact, something off about the snowstorm raging outside. Although the wind and snow had abated for a few hours after what happened that night in the woods—which, fortunately enough, allowed them to make the trip home without catching their deaths—it had started snowing again by the time they made it there. With the few hours of daylight left before sundown, the entire family set about gathering firewood, closing the shutters against the rising wind, pulling the old scratchy wool blankets, redolent with the pungent stench of mothballs, out of the cellar. And all the while reacquainting themselves with opposable thumbs in place of feathers and sleeping on mattresses instead of in nests of twigs and hay.

Overnight, the snowfall had intensified into a veritable blizzard. It had not let up for any of the days or nights since.

“It’s been going on _forever_ ,” Beatrice’s sister Sophia said crossly. That got Benjamin, Aaron, and Rose grumbling about not getting to go outside and try running again.

“What’s _really_ weird,” said Alexander from where he was huddled by the fireplace, “was that it was Fall just a few days ago. It’s not normal for it to be snowing this much when it’s not even winter yet.”

“Well,” their mother cut in mock-sternly, “it’s good that whoever did the housesitting for us left behind all this food. Now hush up and eat your dirt, all of you.”

Beatrice, who had taken to spending most of her time gazing out the front window, had reached the same conclusion—albeit a few days before her family did. Being unable to _see anything_ had clued her in. So had squinting to look at all the white so as not to go snowblind. Still, she had kept these, as well as most of her thoughts to herself.

In the end, when she reunited with her parents and siblings with Adelaide’s scissors in tow, they had all been happy just to see her again after so long. The first thing they did in both their bluebird and human bodies was to embrace her, all of them too eager to give her their hugs in turns, so that Beatrice was enveloped in all their feathers and arms, warm despite the snow. Her parents didn’t let go of her for the longest time. It was a struggle to get free long enough to clip all their wings off.

After the transformation, she felt a tight, incorporeal pressure in her chest. All throughout the trip home, the preparations for the blizzard, and the days stuck inside, the feeling had persisted.

There she was: forgiven, welcomed back, and warm in their old house—she should have felt relieved. Wirt and Greg would chide her for it, if they were still around. Heck, she’d do more than chide Wirt for worrying this much if their positions were reversed.

But she wasn’t worrying. Not exactly. Her guilt was still lodged somewhere inside her. Even though she was in her old body again, it was almost as though the bluebird’s curse still hung over her. How would she rid herself of a feeling she had nurtured for so long? How, exactly, could she let go?

**Author's Note:**

> One summer she goes into the field as usual  
> stopping for a bit at the pool where she often  
> looks at herself, to see  
> if she detects any changes. She sees  
> the same person, the horrible mantle  
> of daughterliness still clinging to her.
> 
> The sun seems, in the water, very close.  
> That’s my uncle spying again, she thinks—  
> everything in nature is in some way her relative.  
>  _I am never alone_ , she thinks,  
> turning the thought into a prayer.  
> Then death appears, like the answer to a prayer.
> 
> No one understands anymore  
> how beautiful he was. But Persephone remembers.  
> Also that he embraced her, right there,  
> with her uncle watching. She remembers  
> sunlight flashing on his bare arms.
> 
> This is the last moment she remembers clearly.  
> Then the dark god bore her away.
> 
> She also remembers, less clearly,  
> the chilling insight that from this moment  
> she couldn’t live without him again.
> 
> The girl who disappears from the pool  
> will never return. A woman will return,  
> looking for the girl she was.
> 
> She stands by the pool saying, from time to time,  
>  _I was abducted_ , but it sounds  
> wrong to her, nothing like what she felt.  
> Then she says, _I was not abducted_.  
>  Then she says, _I offered myself, I wanted_  
>  to escape my body. Even, sometimes,  
>  _I willed this_. But ignorance
> 
> cannot will knowledge. Ignorance  
> wills something imagined, which it believes exists.
> 
> All the different nouns—  
> she says them in rotation.  
>  _Death, husband, god, stranger._  
>  Everything sounds so simple, so conventional.  
>  _I must have been_ , she thinks, _a simple girl_.
> 
> She can’t remember herself as that person  
> but she keeps thinking the pool will remember  
> and explain to her the meaning of her prayer  
> so she can understand  
> whether it was answered or not.
> 
> -Louise Glück


End file.
